Contemporary aircrafts use avionics in order to control the various equipment and operations for flying the aircraft. The avionics may be stored in an avionics chassis, which performs several beneficial functions, some of which are: electrically shielding the avionics from electromagnetic interference (EMI), protecting the avionics from lightning strikes, dissipating the heat generated by the avionics, and protecting the avionics from environmental exposure.
Weight is also a consideration for the avionics chassis. The avionics chassis should perform the beneficial functions without unnecessarily adding weight to the aircraft.
The performance of the beneficial functions is often inapposite to maintaining or reducing the weight of the avionics chassis, especially in light of newer avionics having faster processing speeds and higher frequencies, smaller size, and greater power densities. These avionics generate relatively large amounts of heat, but operate only under a certain range of threshold temperatures, which leads to an increased heat-dissipating requirement that has been previously addressed by increasing the size of the heat sink, leading to an increased weight.
Historically, commercially available avionics chassis are made of aluminum, which inherently has the desired shielding, heat dissipating, lightning strike protection, and environmental protection benefits.